Thursday, December 10, 2009

There’s been a bit of confusion at work over whether the current SharePoint 2010 Public Beta (beta 2) does or doesn’t have a ‘go-live’ licence attached to it. In case others are wondering the same thing, here are the relevant sections copied straight out of the EULA when I installed it:

• You may install and test any number of copies of the software on your premises.

• You may not test the software in a live operating environment unless Microsoft permits you to do so under another agreement.

…

3. TERM. The term of this agreement is until 31/10/2010, or commercial release of the software, whichever is first.

…

8. SUPPORT SERVICES. Because this software is “as is,” we may not provide support services for it.

So… no. Well maybe. There’s no go-live that comes with it, but the option to go-live if separately approved is explicitly left open, and I have been told that’s exactly what some early adopters are doing. What you have to do to get said approval is unknown to me: there was a Technology Adopter Program (TAP), which is where Beta 1 went, so they’d obviously be candidates, or maybe it’s just a standard wording.

Also any number of people have blogged complaining about the lack of a migration path from the public beta to RTM. The only public statements to this effect I can find are on the SharePoint Team Blog:

Is the SharePoint public beta supported? The SharePoint public beta is not supported. However, we recommend looking at our resources listed above and asking questions in the SharePoint2010 forums.

Will there be a migration path from SharePoint public beta to final release?We do not plan to support a SharePoint2010 public beta to release bits migration path. The SharePoint2010 public beta should be used for evaluation and feedback purposes only.

…and in the MSDN forums (see Jei Li’s reply):

Upgrade from SharePoint Server Public Beta to RTM (in-place, or database attach) for general public will be blocked. For exceptions, we will support those who hold a "Go Live" license, they were clearly communicated, signed a contract, and should know their upgrade process would be supported by CSS.